POLICE recorded more than 200 child abuse image offences in Wiltshire last year.

The NSPCC has warned that offenders are using social networks to target children for abuse online, grooming and manipulating them into sending naked images.

A freedom of information request submitted by the children’s charity shows that between April 2017 and March this year Wiltshire Police recorded 262 offences of viewing child abuse images.

This was down from 268 over the previous 12 months. A single offence can involve hundreds of indecent images.

Of the offences recorded 212 were for taking, making or distributing indecent photographs and 50 were for possession of an indecent photograph

Across the UK’s police forces, nearly 23,000 offences were recorded in 2017-18. That was 25 per cent more than in 2016-17.

Tony Stower, the NSPCC’s head of child safety online, said: “Every one of these images represents a real child who has been groomed and abused to supply the demand of this appalling trade.

“The lack of adequate protections on social networks has given offenders all too easy access to children to target and abuse. This is the last chance saloon for social networks on whose platforms this abuse is often taking place.”

A recent NSPCC survey of 40,000 young people revealed an average of one in 50 school children had sent a nude or semi-nude image to an adult.